JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was rushed off stage during a campaign event in Ashkelon after Gazan Palestinians fired a rocket toward the southern Israeli city.
The Iron Dome missile defense system shot down the rocket fired Wednesday night. It is the second time in nearly four months that a Netanyahu event was interrupted by rocket fire.
The event ahead of the Likud Party leadership vote had been live-streamed on several websites, which means that the terrorists knew where Netanyahu was at the time of the rocket launch.
In September just days before national elections, Netanyahu was rushed off a stage and into a bomb shelter in Ashdod as two rockets were fired at the city,
On Wednesday, Netanyahu returned to the stage from a shelter about 15 minutes after alert sirens sounded, and threatened the Palestinian terrorists.
“The person who fired the rockets last time is no longer with us. The person who fired one this time should start packing his things,” Netanyahu said.
Airstrikes were reported on terror targets in Gaza shortly after the Ashkelon attack, the Jerusalem Post reported. Gaza media said Khalil Batani, a senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad official, was behind the order to launch the rocket into Ashkelon, Israel’s Channel 12 reported.
In November, the Israel Defense Forces in a “surgical strike” killed a senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader, Baha Abu al-Ata, in Gaza. Ata is believed to have ordered the September rocket attack.
“This situation in which Israeli citizens live at the mercy of terrorists and the Prime Minister of Israel is unable to tour parts of his country is a badge of shame on the security policy in the South – and a loss of deterrence that no sovereign country can accept,” Blue and White Party Chairman Benny Gantz said in a statement.
